Perhaps
the most well known chapter of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is also its
moral high ground. Huck has been helping Jim, the Sawyer family’s runaway
slave to escape. He has been pursued by armed law enforcement officer’s
as well as the good citizens and businessmen of Hannibal, Missouri. Huck
is further tormented in his own consciousness, knowing that he is stealing, or
assisting in Jim’s theft of himself. Huck replays all the sermons he has heard
in church, all the discussions on the town square about the evils of the godless
northern abolitionists, yet he sympathizes with Jim, now recognizing him to be a
human being in need, like himself. Huck grows beyond the conventional wisdom of
his time, risking even eternal damnation by stealing Jim, becoming a here-and-now
abolitionist, resolving “All right then, I’ll GO to Hell!” What brings
Huck to an independent moral decision? A personal encounter with the humanity of
the escaped slave Jim.

The
Circleville Friends Worship Group (more commonly known as Quakers) and Veterans
for Peace invite you to a personal encounter with the human cost of the Iraq War
on the Pickaway County Courthouse steps Friday, October 26th through
Sunday October 27th. We shall host speakers and group music and
singing of peace songs on Saturday the 27th from Noon till 4:00 p.m.

“Eyes
Wide Open - The Human Cost of the Iraq War” features an empty pair of combat
boots for each of the almost 180 Ohio troops killed in Iraq as well as a
collection of civilian shoes for the over 100,000 Iraqis civilians killed.

So
few of us have a human connection with the Iraq War. The caskets coming
home are, by executive order, forbidden to photo-journalists. Almost none
of our 535 elected federal representatives have a son or daughter serving in our
armed forces. Few of us have a relative, wrongfully suffering “extraordinary
rendition,” aka tortured and held without legal rights. Few of us are
concerned about the unknown tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children killed
directly by the euphemism of "collateral damage” inflicted by U.S.
firepower. Few of us are concerned with the damage to our national character
suffered by these actions. Some, including the majority of the House and
Senate, have become aware that money for children’s healthcare is
irresponsibly being siphoned into an unnecessary war that we started because we
couldn’t think straight after 9/11.

We
invite you to a quiet contemplative moment, among the combat boots and shoes our
lack of a personal connection has emptied at “Eyes Wide Open.” Perhaps
in the stillness, we can begin to atone as a nation. It is a long road ahead,
but one we can and must travel.